Philosophy

Philosophy is the search for wisdom.
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you will need to further define the level of consciousness since there are many types such as an animal's and a human's, both different yet still conscious to some degree. consciousness also does not mean you require a "soul" or a "spirit", those are not a standard in mainstream scientific theories, however, the brain is a necessity for the mind to exist, the "hardware" to the "software". that being said, the brain is just an organ which relays and interprets electrical signals, meaning that it might be possible to replicate such an environment with machines but to achieve such a feat means that we first have to understand how our own brains work and it might be a while before technology is able to reach this calibre as nature is certainly at its most efficient whereas human replication with machines is not nearly as promising...

Okay, I wasn't familiar with Eywa, but I did a quick Google search and found out a bit. I'm honestly intrigued by such a view of God. I'm curious how you came to that view and what exactly the balance that you refer to is.

Haha, I'm sure that I don't know any more about physics than you do! I know that we've been careful thus far to keep religious ideas out of the discussion, but I'm curious if you have any thoughts on what (or who) the master entity is.

Yes, the idea of a God does seem to help a lot. If the universe were to create itself by space condensing, I could ask, "But where did the space come from, and what caused it to condense?" A Mind, on the other hand, would not have a problem with those questions, for it would always existed, and being a mind, could itself cause the universe.

Theists call this necessary thing God; Pantheists would probably say that it is All that Exists; I'm not sure what Atheists would call it. For you, I think that it is the Master Entity, but I don't want to put words in your mouth.

I'll try to explain, but you'll have to be patient with me, since I don't fully understand the ideas myself. If a thing is contingent, it's existence was caused by some other thing. If it is necessary, it's existence was simply not caused by some other thing. Since it is impossible for all things to be contingent, something must exist that was not caused to exist, i.e., it is eternal and always existed.

I've always thought that nothing could never be more than a concept, albeit a useful one. Even the word "nothing" really just means "no thing". When we say that a room contains nothing, what is meant is that the room does not contain any thing, right?